Brighton Dome, Brighton.
11 February 2026.
I’m intrigued by a comment I read on Michael Keegan-Dolan’s MÁM, presented by Dance Consortium, before I attended the show this evening that read, “I don’t know what it was, but I loved it!” The programme describes a “whirlwind of myth and magic,” and I’m ready for it!
Pleased to note on entrance that it will be a one-act performance. Sometimes intervals can really interrupt the flow, and this would certainly have been the case tonight, had there been one. It was lively, it was musical – there was a live band on stage. It was dramatic, weird, unsettling and joyful.
A large wooden table sat centrally in front of the curtain and a young girl in a white dress, white gloves and shiny white shoes. pulled back the curtain, climbed on to the table and lay down to open the show. She’s to be noted as having incredible composure throughout; on stage for the entire 80 minutes and never losing concentration, in spite of the weird and sometimes wonderful requests of her during the show. Her long hair is loose, and as the curtain rose on our centrally seated virtuoso Irish traditional concertina player Cormac Begley, who also composed the music for MÁM, the girl nonchalantly opened a packet of crisps and ate them whilst listening to the music.
It’s all about the music, and we began with just the concertina – the rest of the band appearing behind a dramatic back curtain drop later in the show – and the rest of the cast, seated in a row, men in black suits, women in simple black shift dresses, all with black bags on their heads. They created rhythm with their feet, hands and voices, pointing at the girl, who stood facing them on the table.
I loved the variety of Irish, folk, jazzy, lyrical, hypnotic, and toe-tapping music that flowed seamlessly from one style to the next. And the way dancers responded to that with their bodies and sometimes with voices. Of course, it’s intricately choreographed, but in a way that looked free and impulsive. It’s also continuous, and surely they’ll be exhausted later, but there’s never a shortage of things to watch. The way the oboe player came forward and reached towards dancers as she played, as though breathing the dance into them. The continual interaction between dancers, and between dancers and musicians. Often it looked like a group of friends jamming together. And sometimes it looked odd and inappropriate – from the point of view that they’d chosen to have a child dressed in innocent white stand still, often on a raised platform and observe them with a calm, non-reactive attitude.
A serious downfall in tonight’s fabulous production was the inclusion of smoking onstage by two of the cast. In particular, the purposeful blowing of smoke over the young girl. Probably included to shock, but not necessary, not required for any plot development, and disappointing, confirmed by the audibly negative reaction of the audience.
MÁM was largely free of narrative, though it was representational of an “otherworldly journey steeped in the landscape and culture of West Kerry in Ireland.”
This left the audience free to concoct their own ideas in the entertaining, risky and unexpected environment created. I particularly enjoyed the visual of 11 dancers seated in tiered rows of two and three above one another, responding with arms and upper bodies to the music.
The calm ending was very effective; the girl stood central, raising and lowering her arms to conduct the dancer’s voices, softening to breath. They faced her, and then gradually turned one at a time to face the audience. We’ve seen them and now they see us? And a large fan at the back, blew the onstage dry ice towards us, and rippled the girl’s dress and hair as she stood in front of it arms outstretched. There was a standing ovation, and much talk from the audience on leaving; including, “Don’t say I don’t bring you to unusual things!” from one woman to her friends!
By Louise Ryrie of Dance Informa.
